Hey all, been playing World of Warcraft since the beginning. When Blizzard announced Archaeology I was excited, seemed like it could be fun (boy, was I wrong). When the profession launched, I quickly capped it and went about trying to farm items of use (Zin'Rokh comes to mind). I never was able to get a Zin'Rokh. I took a break after ~300 Troll solves early Cata. In Mists of Pandaria, I leveled it to cap and briefly tried to get Zin'Rokh again (As a troll warrior, what would be more awesome and accurate than having a true troll warrior theme going). Once again, it's come to either quit or lose my sanity. I'm certain I can't be the only one who found Arch boring as can be. I started thinking about Archaeology now, the problems with the current design, and ways to improve it and was looking for some feedback before posting it on the official forums (where it will likely get a standard working as intended response or something but still)
The Current Archaeology Profession
Travel around the continents, stopping at dig sites. 4 Dig Sites per continent are active, 6 digs available per site (up from earlier 3 per site). Players have no control which dig sites spawn. Each site is one of the races available on the continent. Players collect fragments and keystones and use these to recreate ancient items, potentially rare items. Overall, this leads to a very dull profession. Most of the time spent is traveling
Problems with the Current Model
The main problems with the current model are threefold.
1. Random dig sites. Lore-wise, is there any reason that we should be forced to randomly travel across the world to dig sites of every race? Why do we have to do Dwarves, or Fossil sites when all we want is Troll? or Night Elf? Why are we forced to go to sites we don't care about.
2. Completed races. Building off the first issue. Why are we forced to do Dwarf solves and sites when we have done ALL archaeology solves? I finished Dwarf, Mogu, and Fossils already. Yet whenever I did on Pandaria, I still can discover Mogu dig sites. I am still forced to do Fossil or Dwarf dig sites for no reason beyond the site came up.
3. Boredom. All your time in this profession is spent traveling. A small part is finding fragments. An absolutely tiny portion is solving and actually getting the ancient item. This does not make for an interesting time nor profession.
Ways to improve Archaeology
1. Already started, but the random battles upon finding an item that has started on Pandaria. It means you do more than travel and search. Perhaps improve on this with the possibility of finding 'rare' or 'champion' version of these. Make them like the Pandaria champions where they are slightly difficult, with each race having a set combination of abilities and the champions spawn on their race locations. Have these drop a large amount of fragments or keystones.
2. Have the ability to toggle races off. Give the option to toggle off racial dig sites you don't want. If I only want Troll dig sites, why do I have to go to the other races dig sites? There is no logical answer to this!
A sub-shoot of the previous idea. Once you finish all solves of a races, you can toggle them off. Why should players be forced to solve races which give them nothing but trash to sell? why can't they focus on races they haven't completely finished?
Thanks for reading, leave suggestions on how to improve Arch, improve my suggestions, and thoughts on the profession in general. Thanks!